Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible for the Democrats to become an even mildly social democratic party. Unlike UK Labour or the European Social Democrats, the Dems were never rooted in the labor movement and rather co-opted their leadership.

As a result, the closest we'll get is middle class 'progressive' reformists, but even they have no chance of assuming leadership of the party. The entire structure is set up so only those with the most sway over private interests can rise to the top of the party. This is why Tom Perez became Chair and it's why Clinton won the primaries.

Irony: the Republican Party is the only US labor party that was ever rooted in the labor movement and it is the only one with a democratic primary system and yet it’s role is to serve as the open reactionary party

it's a way of saying "i'm politically savvy and a clever party strategist even though i'm nothing more than a pseud whose spouting the party line and party talking points that party mouthpieces on TV tell us to say"

you're deluded, /pol/. the democrats had the support of most major trade unions since the Great Depression. and, no, the primary system is only slightly more democratic than the Dem one and presidential elections which they culminate in are hardly "democratic" either.

I've said it before, but what exactly do they think qualifies one to be an elected politician besides the vote? Pilots have to go to flight school, doctors have to go to medical school, lawyers have to go to law school. They are all credentialed by their respective industries and can have their credentials revoked by their industry but what is the official credential of elected office besides the vote?

2. Quit being a historically illiterate faggot whose probably also a former dem and read about the labor/abolitionist roots of the Republican Party and it’s revolutionary role in the Civil War and post-Civil War development

3. The super-delegate system of Dems is enough to show that they are not committed to democracy. The Repubs have a more democratic primary system bc of their history as a farmer-labor party, I am not saying that the actions of the party or The contents are Democratic. I’m also not saying that their primary system is good or ideal but it is better than the Dems since they were historically the party of slavery and Jim Crow

I get that you're just memeing but it's important to remember that a lot of people think this way. For example people wanting all their elected representatives to be generic lawyers who have studied the law so much they can quickly build any sort of legal concept, device or institution bourgeoisie might demand. This works hand in hand with lobbying which people also defend because it means politicians are getting the best advice plausible from industry-based sources (otherwise known as shills).

Unfortunately most of the modern establishment left considers this to be reasonable. Instead of having industries be led by people who worked in them they're managed by a managerial class of bureaucrats and investors who make the real decisions. As a result every human and resource is reduced to a price on a spreadsheet, and nationalism quickly tucked into the dustbin of history. This suits liberals well until those numbers stop being able to participate in the system and it falters under it's own inherent contradictions.

Socialism in america is inevitable no matter how much the neolibs try to stop it.

Trump winning wasnt normal. It was a paradigm shift. Real change. Unlike obama who was just a black colored neoliberal puppet. Trump winning revealed how weak and hollow the neoliberal establishment are that even a loud mouth reality tv show host could beat them.

An electorate which had been divided on left-right terms (economics, social issues) is now divided on local-global terms (trade, immigration, war, anti-trust). Politicians who cannot grok this shift will be destroyed – Hillary Clinton. Didnt campaign on issues that resonated with the electorate, they were stuck in the old paradigm, they sank beneath their controversies. Compare to Bernie Sanders, who moved from obscurity to national prominence by campaigning on manufacturing (and not his record of tranny rights in Burlington).

>Statewide, John Fetterman — a small-town mayor with a bristly beard and tattoos on both of his arms — toppled Pennsylvania’s incumbent lieutenant governor, Mike Stack, thanks in part to the strong endorsement of Bernie Sanders

and…? I'm quite capable of understanding that the democrats are not a clean party by any stretch that doesn't mean I have to go 180 degrees and say that they're the roots of racism.

>labor/abolitionist roots of the Republican Party

it was a coalition you cherry picking faggot. Yes, there were ideological abolitionists but there were also northern industrialists who took the reins of the party after the Civil War. How the fuck are you ignoring that Republicans were the business party of the 1920s and 30s? Of course there's nuance, with progressive republicans and racist democrats within the parties' respective coalitions. You're also ignoring that the "free labor" component of the early abolitionists was still condoning wage slavery and exploitation in practice. You can just as much hark back to Democrat's idealization of independent small farmers and distrust of big business and banks as "pro-labbor"

>You're also ignoring that the "free labor" component of the early abolitionists was still condoning wage slavery and exploitation in practice.

No one disputes this, but you do know that in the 19th century it was the Republicans who were more tolerant of labor unions than democrats. The Democrats couldn’t be tolerant of labor unions as the party of slavery and then as the party of the Klan which fought to maintain the open shop.

You might think the relative tolerance of unionization ended with the death of Lincoln or Grant but if you fast forward to even the 1912 election Teddy Roosevelt was to the Left of Woodrow Wilson economically. Wilson believed that unionization was unnecessary we just needed to bust the big companies and capitalism would just magically produce better conditions for the people whereas Roosevelt made the argument that big corporations could pay better wages and therefore the root of the problem was that workers couldn’t organize to bargain collectively for better wages.

Even if you argue that William Jennings Bryan’s was the start of the Democratic shift to the Left, the man was a rather extreme racist whose big plan was to devalue worker’s wages by switching to silver to prop up the fortunes of petit-bourgeois farmers.

The roles of the two parties really reversed in the 20s due to the terrible response of Republican administrations to the crisis but you argue that the Republican Party is the “party of business” when their both business parties. Even if you argue that one represents big capital and small capital isn’t necessarily more progressive than big capital it certainly isn’t true any more that big capital supports the republicans—now big capital particularly of the Silicon Valley variety is more inclined to support the Dems

IIRC the two Democrat Cops of America candidates in PA (who defeated incumbents from a long-standing political dynasty) are literally running unopposed in the general, or are at least in safe blue constituencies. WaPo is being deliberately disingenuous by using that term.